'Flesh eating' infection left woman in wheelchair for nine years after giving birth
A mom contracted a flesh-eating disease after getting a c-section.
Kelley Simmons from Norfolk in the UK was left using a wheelchair for nine years after giving birth when she caught the disease back in 2009.
This was a disease called necrotising fasciitis, a very rare and extremely serious health condition which causes tissue in the skin to die very quickly.
If not treated urgently the disease can be fatal, and Kelley's life was completely changed after catching the infection, which caused her c-section wound to reopen and would have eaten through the stitches medics used to close the wound.
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Fortunately, doctors were able to stem the infection using steroids, but Kelly, 44, was left wheelchair bound by the disease, and is now unable to work.
Kelley had to have an emergency c-section to deliver her son at just six months.
Her son is now 16 years old, and Kelley opened up about the aftermath of the surgery.
“I was rushed in to hospital. Doctors gave me antibiotics, but they didn’t work. My stomach started to open up, from one side to the other.
“After doing tests they discovered I had necrotising fasciitis. I was so scared, because you can lose your limbs from it."
Around two weeks after the surgery Kelley's surgical wound began to ooze pus, and she went back to hospital.
Kelley recalled that doctors found that the surgical tools used in her c-section had not been properly sterilised, and this is where the disease had originated.
She had to spend three months in hospital, and couldn't see her son after his premature birth.
“It was horrible being apart from him," Kelley said.
“Doctors couldn’t stitch the wound up, because the necrotising fasciitis would have just eaten through the stitches.
“They sent me home from the hospital with a sanitary towel attached to my stomach, to stop the pus from oozing everywhere."
Eventually, she could return home with a sanitary towel on her stomach to contain the pus from the wound.
After a full year the wound eventually healed up without stitches.
Because she had been bed bound for so long, Kelley's muscles had weakened and she was confined to a wheelchair.
As if that wasn't enough, she would later develop a hernia on her abdomen, and had surgery to remove it, which left her with a condition that causes ulcers.
The ulcers then got infected, and gave her sepsis.
“Doctors gave me 12 hours to live," she said.
Fortunately, Kelley was able to survive her second ordeal after another three months in hospital.
Although she was able to walk again, she would go on to be diagnosed with functional neurological disorder, once again confining Kelley to a wheelchair.
Kit Roberts